Authors: J. A. Jance
“What about Barbara?”
“I have no idea,” Anna Marie said.
“The last time I saw her was at Lisa’s funeral. She was
there with her fiancé. I know she introduced me to him, but I
don’t remember his name or anything about him. I don’t
think he was from around here.”
“Did Lisa have any other friends?”
“Not really. She wasn’t a very outgoing
person; she was pretty but shy. I thought working in the dry
cleaner’s would help
bring her out of
herself. Instead, she ended up meeting Bradley. He asked her out
and that was it. He was the only person she ever dated, and for
some reason she didn’t think she deserved anyone
better.”
Joanna thought about what Leslie Markham had
said—that Rory was the only person she had ever dated. It
sounded as though Lisa Marie Crystal’s history had repeated
itself in Leslie. Both of them had settled for someone who probably
wasn’t the very best specimen of manhood. And what about
Lisa’s father, Anna Marie’s beloved Kenny? Maybe he
wasn’t any better than the men his daughter and granddaughter
had chosen. Was the propensity for choosing men badly also to be
found on mitochondrial DNA?
Joanna closed her notebook and rose to her feet.
“We’ll see what we can do to track down Barbara
Tanner.”
Anna Marie rose, too, and followed Frank and Joanna
to the door. “You will tell me, won’t you?”
“Tell you what?” Joanna asked.
“Tell me if you find out someone else was
involved,” Anna Marie said. “It wouldn’t change
anything, but at least then I’d know why Lisa died—that
there was an actual reason for it. That’s what I really
wanted Bradley to tell me—why he did it. If he’d given
me at least that much, maybe I could have forgiven him, but without
knowing…” Anna Marie shook her head and didn’t
finish.
“If we find out,” Joanna said, “I
promise we’ll let you know. But tell me one more thing, Mrs.
Crystal. Do you happen to remember when your daughter’s baby
was due?”
“Oh, yes,” Anna Marie said. “I
remember that perfectly. Her due date was November the fifteenth.
That’s my birthday, too, so of course I remember. When Lisa
told me she was pregnant, I re
member telling
Kenny, ‘Oh, boy! By Thanksgiving we’ll be
grandparents.’ But that wasn’t to be,” she added
sadly.
“The families never do get over it, do
they,” Frank observed, once they were back in his Crown
Victoria. “But I admit, the family resemblance from Anna
Marie to Lisa and from Lisa to Leslie is downright spooky. Where to
now?”
But Joanna already had her phone out and was
dialing Markham Realty. “Since Leslie and her husband own the
place, let’s hope she doesn’t go home at the stroke of
five.”
“Ms. Markham is in with a client writing up
an offer,” Fran, the receptionist, told her. “It may be
some time before she’s available, and I’m not allowed
to interrupt.”
“That’s all right,” Joanna said.
“We’ll stop by the office and wait for her to
finish.”
“What’s the plan?” Frank
asked.
“Leslie presumably knows the least about what
went on in 1978, but she still may be able to tell us things that
will help. She may be aware that she’s adopted. Then
again…”
“You’re going to tell her?”
“I’m not sure,” Joanna said.
“Maybe. If not, our fallback position will be DNA.”
“Which could take weeks or months to give us
an answer.” Frank sighed. “I suppose it would be asking
too much to hope that Leslie Markham smokes, too.”
“No,” Joanna said, “I’m
sure she doesn’t. We’re going to stop by the Starbucks
on our way and pick up a latte for her. When it’s time for us
to leave, I’m going to count on you to bus the
table—and to keep the cups straight.”
“I should be able to manage that much. By the
way, Leslie is number four.”
“Number four what?”
“Mrs. Rory Markham the fourth,” Frank
returned. “He married Leslie two weeks to the day after his
divorce from number three was final.”
“No wonder I didn’t like the
guy,” Joanna said. “He gave me the
heebie-jeebies.”
“More of your good ol’ woman’s
intuition?” Frank asked.
“More like woman’s radar,” Joanna
replied.
They waited in the lobby of Markham Realty until a
quarter past six. When Leslie finally emerged from the conference
room and escorted her client to the front door, she frowned at
Frank and Joanna as she walked past. Only when the client was
safely out of earshot did she whirl on them.
“What are you doing here?” she
demanded. “I already told you everything I know. I’ve
never met the man who took those pictures, and Rory’s still
mad at me about it. He thinks I had some kind of
relationship—”
“Actually,” Joanna said,
“I’m quite certain you never had a romantic
relationship of any kind with the man in question. In fact, our
investigation will be able to lay your husband’s concerns to
rest on that score. But could we please go somewhere a little more
private to discuss this? And we brought you a drink. It’s
probably cool by now, but…”
She was relieved when Leslie accepted the proffered
cup without a murmur and then led them into the conference
room.
“Tell me about your parents,” Joanna
said once they were all seated.
“My parents?” Leslie repeated. “I
thought I already did that.” She paused and, to
Joanna’s relief, took a tentative sip of the latte. “My
father is Lawrence Tazewell—Judge Lawrence Tazewell of the
Arizona Supreme Court. He lives in Phoenix with his second wife,
Sharon. My mother’s last name is Houli
han,” she continued. “She took her maiden
name back after the divorce, and she’s never remarried. Rory
and I live with my mother on the ranch that originally belonged to
her family over at the base of the Whetstones. We live in one house
and Mother lives in another. She used to raise quarter horses, but
she doesn’t do that anymore.”
“Used to?” Joanna asked.
Leslie nodded. “She hasn’t been well
for several years now—one of those degenerative things. When
it got to be too much for her, we sold off most of the
livestock.”
“What’s your date of birth?”
Joanna asked.
“Why?” Leslie returned.
“Humor me,” Joanna said.
Leslie sighed. “All right. October
twenty-eighth, 1978. Actually, it’s a fun story.”
Joanna felt a quickening of excitement.
Leslie’s birth date fit. October 28 was the day before
Bradley Evans had been arrested. Anna Marie had told them Lisa
Evans had been due on November 15, but if the baby had been born
two weeks early, no one might have noticed.
“What kind of story?” Joanna asked.
“More like a family legend,” Leslie
conceded. “And, of course, everything I’m telling you
is secondhand. The first time I heard it, I was just a kid and I
thought it was incredibly embarrassing. Now it seems pretty
amazing. Anyway, my father was away the week my mother was due to
give birth. He was somewhere out of state at a conference for
judges, and my mother was out on the ranch. My grandfather had
remodeled the old bunkhouse for them to live in. As a matter of
fact, that’s the same house where Rory and I live now.
“Anyway, Mother went into labor so hard and
fast that there wasn’t time enough to get her to the
hospital. Fortunately, Grandma Ruth was there to help. She always
said it was a real pioneering experience. They boiled water and
everything. She used a kitchen shears to cut the umbilical cord.
After I was born, they packed Mother and me off to the hospital in
Sierra Vista to be checked out. By the time my father came home
from his conference, we were both back home safe and
sound.”
Of course,
Joanna
thought.
It’s much more difficult to
pull a baby switcheroo if you’re in a hospital
setting.
Joanna had come to the office with every intention
of pulling out the damning photographs and trying to get some
straight answers, but clearly Leslie was an innocent bystander
here. She didn’t deserve to be asked the tough questions.
Aileen Houlihan was another matter.
“Did your mother ever mention a friend or
acquaintance named Lisa?” Joanna asked. “Lisa Marie
Evans?”
Leslie shook her head. “Not that I remember.
Who’s she?”
“She was married to Bradley Evans, the man
who took the photographs of you.”
“I remember now,” Leslie said.
“You told us about her yesterday. You said Evans went to
prison for murdering her—for murdering his wife.”
Joanna nodded. “Lisa was pregnant at the time
she disappeared in late October of 1978,” she said.
“Recently my investigators uncovered new evidence that
suggests perhaps she wasn’t murdered after all.”
“And you think Lisa Evans and my mother may
have been friends?”
“Possibly. I’d like to ask her about
it.”
“I don’t think so,” Leslie
said.
“Why not?”
“I already told you. Mother’s ill.
She’s not up to having visitors.”
Rather than arguing about it, Joanna simply moved
on. “What about your father?” she asked.
“We’ll want to talk to him as well. I’m sure we
can reach him through his office next week, but can you tell us how
to get in touch with him over the weekend?”
Leslie shook her head and a shadow of sadness
clouded her face. “Sorry. His home number is unlisted, and I
don’t have it to give. He and my mother divorced years ago.
He and I have never been close.”
Not having her father’s home phone number was
about as “not close” as Joanna could imagine, but that
small admission made Rory Markham’s presence in
Leslie’s life far more understandable. Estranged from her
father, Leslie had gone looking for a father figure—and had
found one. It wasn’t all that surprising, then, that she had
settled on a man who was probably only a few years younger than her
biological father.
“That’s all right,” Joanna said
reassuringly. “I’m sure we’ll be able to locate
him even without your help.”
Leslie glanced at her watch and her eyes widened.
“I didn’t know it was so late!” she exclaimed,
dropping her paper cup in the trash. “Rory and I are supposed
to meet someone for dinner ten minutes from now. I really must
go.”
“Of course,” Joanna said. “Sorry
to have kept you so long.”
“Is there anything else you need?”
“Not at the moment.”
Frank paused at the doorway, motioning for the
women to leave first. Once they were out in the hall, Joanna caught
sight of him ducking back to retrieve Leslie’s cup.
Neither of them said anything more until they were
back in the car.
“She doesn’t even have her
father’s unlisted phone number?” Frank commented.
“What kind of family is that?”
“A broken one,” Joanna said. “As
sad as she was, I just couldn’t bring myself to blow her out
of the water,” she added once the car doors closed.
“I couldn’t have done it either,”
Frank said. “So it’s on to plan B, which means
we’re back to getting the DNA tested?”
“That’s about it,” Joanna said.
“The testing itself can be done in a matter of hours. The big
problem will be pushing this to the top of the list. Once we have
the samples there, I’ll see what I can do to get things
moving.”
“What about me?” Frank asked.
“See what you can do about locating Lawrence
Tazewell’s address as well as his unlisted phone number. With
a federal judgeship hanging in the balance, I’m wondering
about him.”
“As in, Bradley shows up with a handful of
pictures that pretty well proves Lawrence Tazewell knowingly sent
an innocent man up the river. The next thing that happens is his
federal bench nomination is in the toilet.”
“Exactly,” Joanna agreed. “Sounds
like possible motive to me.”
“But if he’s a suspect, what makes you
think the man will talk to us?” Frank asked.
“We’ll just have to try,” Joanna
said. “And if he doesn’t, maybe Aileen will.”
“But Leslie said…”
“I know she said her mother wasn’t up
to having visitors,” Joanna returned. “But this is a
homicide investigation. One way or the other, we’re going to
talk to the woman.”
“Tonight?” Frank asked.
Joanna looked at the clock on the dash. It was
almost seven, and she had yet to call Butch to let him know
she’d be late for dinner.
“No, not tonight,” she said. “If
Aileen really is ill, it’s probably too late to drop by to
see her. Tomorrow will be plenty of time.”
“But tomorrow’s Saturday,” Frank
objected. “Are you sure you want to work on
Saturday?”
“Working on a Saturday before the baby is
born will be easier than working any day of the week afterward.
Yes, I’m working tomorrow. What about you?”
Frank Montoya shook his head. “You’re
hopeless,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Joanna asked.
“If you can’t figure out how to take
even so much as a weekend off, I doubt you’re going to be any
good at maternity leave.”
Joanna should have been able to object, but she
couldn’t because it occurred to her as soon as Frank said it
that he was probably right.
B
y the
time Joanna got back to High Lonesome Ranch, Butch and Jenny were
watching a movie in the family room with all three dogs scattered
around them. Lady came into the kitchen to keep Joanna company
while she reheated her dinner in the microwave. She was finishing
eating when the program ended and Butch joined her.
“That’s the great thing about green
chili casserole,” he said. “The older it gets, the
better it tastes.”
“You’re right,” Joanna agreed.
“It was great.”
“So how’s it going?” he asked.
“You look upset.”
“I am upset,” she said.
“Sometimes being a cop sucks.”
Sitting down at the table, Butch took her hand.
“What’s wrong?”
Joanna shrugged. “In the process of
investigating a homicide, I’m about to blow someone’s
life wide open.”
“Presumably not the killer’s,”
Butch said, “or you wouldn’t be concerned about
it.”
It was gratifying that Butch knew her so well.
“That’s right,” she agreed.
“Not the killer’s. We’re about to tell a totally
innocent twenty-five-year-old real estate agent out in Sierra Vista
that she isn’t who she thinks she is, that the people who
claim to be her biological parents aren’t even related to
her.”
“Lots of people don’t find out
they’re adopted until they’re grown,” Butch
suggested. “It’s not fatal.”
“In this case the biological mother evidently
pulled a phony disappearing act. She handed her baby off to someone
else to raise and then left the child’s father to go to
prison for the alleged ‘murder’ of his wife and child.
The biological father did his time and was finally released a
couple of years ago. The trouble started when he accidentally ran
into the daughter, who looks spookily like her mother. As soon as
he tumbled to the fact that the baby probably didn’t die, he
did. Someone murdered him. To make matters worse, the faux father,
who may turn into a likely homicide suspect, happens to be a much
respected member of the Arizona Supreme Court—Justice
Lawrence Tazewell.”
“Not good,” Butch said. “What are
you going to do about it?”
“I have no idea. In fact, that’s what
I’m sitting here trying to noodle out. Someone needs to go up
to Phoenix to interview him, but Ernie is off on medical leave, and
Jaime and Debbie are busy tracking down the people who beat up
Jeannine Phillips. With the department so
shorthanded—”
“No,” Butch interrupted.
“What do you mean, no?” she asked.
“I mean the baby’s due within the week.
I don’t want you traipsing all the way to Phoenix to talk to
a homicide suspect. Get Frank to do it or one of the other
deputies.”
“But the man is a state supreme court
justice,” Joanna objected. “I can’t very well
send one of my deputies to talk to him.”
“Yes, you can,” Butch declared.
“You’re pregnant. Who would end up interviewing the guy
if the baby were already here and you were off on maternity
leave?”
“I don’t know,” Joanna said
gloomily.
“Well,” Butch returned, “get used
to it. You’re going to have to let go sometime.”
“That’s what Frank said.”
“That you’re going to have to let
go?”
“That I’m going to flunk maternity
leave.”
“He’s right,” Butch observed.
“That’s a distinct possibility, but in the meantime,
what are you going to do about this?”
“Keep on thinking, I guess,” Joanna
said. “Maybe even sleep on it.”
Butch collected her plate and silverware and took
it over to the sink. “That’s right,” he said.
“I almost forgot. I have a message for you from Eva Lou and
Jim Bob. They said to tell you that you’re not allowed to
have the baby until after they get home tomorrow night.”
“Where did they go?” Joanna asked.
“I didn’t know they were planning a trip.”
“Neither did they,” Butch said.
“They took Monty to Albuquerque.”
“Monty?” Joanna asked.
“Who’s Monty?”
Butch shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Monty the python. That’s what Jim Bob says you called
him, Monty Python.”
“The snake!” Joanna exclaimed.
“I’ve been so busy I’d forgotten all about him.
What happened?”
“It turns out there’s a python rescue
guy over in Albuquerque who’s willing to take on the one from
here, and Manny Ruiz was very eager to unload the snake and get him
out of the kennel. He said the python was driving the other animals
nuts
and the receptionist as well.” Butch
paused and then added, “Speaking of Animal Control, what do
you hear about Jeannine Phillips?”
“Not much,” Joanna said. “As far
as I know, she’s still in the ICU. Jaime Carbajal and Debbie
Howell are working full-time to track down whoever did it. So far
they don’t seem to be making a lot of progress.”
“What you need more than anything,”
Butch said, “is a decent night’s sleep.”
“You might tell that to that son of
yours,” Joanna replied. “He seems to spend half of
every night kicking the daylights out of me.”
“Speaking of baby Dennis,” Butch said
with a grin, “before they left, I told Jim Bob and Eva Lou
that we now know we’re having a boy. And I told your mother
and George as well. I knew there’d be hell to pay if one set
of grandparents found out far in advance of any other set of
grandparents. Did your mother call you?”
“Not yet,” Joanna said. “That
means she’s probably pissed because she didn’t hear the
news directly from me. No matter what we do, there’s no way
to win with that woman.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on
her,” Butch said.
He had finished loading the last of the dishes into
the dishwasher when Jenny came into the kitchen carrying the phone
with her hand held firmly over the mouthpiece. “It’s
your office,” she said with a frown. “Cassie and I were
right in the middle of a conversation. Could you please
hurry?”
Cassie Parks was Jenny’s best friend. Joanna
had noticed that the older the two girls grew, the harder it was to
pry the telephone receiver out of Jenny’s hand.
“I’ve got Justice Tazewell’s
unlisted number,” Frank Montoya
announced
as soon as Joanna answered. “Do you want to call him or
should I?”
“I will,” Joanna said. “Give it
to me.”
Minutes later she was dialing Lawrence
Tazewell’s number in Paradise Valley. The woman who answered
the phone sounded Hispanic. “Justice Tazewell isn’t
here,” she told Joanna.
“Could I speak to Mrs. Tazewell then,”
Joanna asked. “This is Sheriff Joanna Brady from Cochise
County.”
“Mrs. Tazewell isn’t here, either.
Would you like to leave a message?”
Joanna was reluctant to leave a message, but there
didn’t seem to be any other option. “Yes,” she
said finally. “Please ask him to call me. It’s not an
emergency, but it is about his daughter.”
After relaying her numbers, Joanna returned the
phone to her daughter. Five minutes later, a frowning Jenny was
back in the kitchen, once again handing her mother the phone.
“Sheriff Brady?” a man’s voice
asked. “This is Justice Lawrence Tazewell. You called?
What’s this about my daughter? Is she all right?”
Joanna had expected Tazewell to be a distant and
indifferent father, but there was nothing indifferent in his tone
of voice.
“Your daughter’s fine,” Joanna
said.
“Oh,” Tazewell uttered with obvious
relief. “Thank God for that. What’s this all about
then?”
In the background Joanna heard a buzz of voices.
Tazewell was returning her call from a relatively public
place—not the best kind of environment to pose the kinds of
questions she needed to ask.
“We’ve learned that someone’s
been stalking her,” Joanna said, hedging her bet.
“Taking Leslie’s picture without her knowledge. Her
husband suggested to my investigators and me
that the stalking might have something to do with
your possible nomination to the federal bench.”
“I doubt it,” Tazewell answered.
“And for the record, I wouldn’t believe anything Rory
Markham has to say.”
Not an indifferent father at
all,
Joanna thought.
“Look,” Tazewell said. “I’m
sure you and I need to discuss all of this, but I can’t do it
right now. What about tomorrow?”
“Where would you like to meet?” Joanna
asked.
“I’m in Tucson at a meeting, but I have
my own plane. Why don’t I just fly into Bisbee sometime in
the morning. We can talk there.”
“In the municipal airport?”
“Sure,” Tazewell said. “When I
was a superior court judge in Bisbee and living out on the ranch, I
used to do it all the time. Saved myself all kinds of commuting
time and wear and tear on my car. I’ll show up, we can have
our little chat, and I’ll fly right back out again. What time
would you like me there, and can someone meet me?”
“Nine will be fine,” Joanna said at
once. “And I’ll pick you up myself.”
“Good,” Tazewell said. “See you
then.”
Joanna was still looking at the phone in amazement
when Cassie Parks’s voice said, “Jenny, are you
there?” Once again Joanna handed the phone back to her
daughter.
“So he’s coming here?” Butch
asked.
Joanna nodded.
“Well,” Butch said, “that’s
better than your having to go there.”
They went to bed relatively early. As usual, Joanna
didn’t sleep well. Her back hurt. She couldn’t get
comfortable. As predicted, little Dennis kicked up a storm. In the
quiet between
kicks, Joanna spent the waking
hours trying to imagine what questions she would pose to Justice
Lawrence Tazewell, who might or might not be a suspect in the
Bradley Evans homicide.
The fact that Tazewell had offered to come to
Bisbee for the interview should have made her less nervous, but it
didn’t. Joanna was enough of a poker player to realize that
Tazewell’s willing cooperation might be nothing more than a
cagey defensive gambit. By feigning a willingness to help, he might
actually be deliberately trying to throw her off track.
She was still nervous about the upcoming interview
at nine the next morning as she watched a blue-and-white Cessna 180
circle for a landing on the single runway of Bisbee’s
municipal airport. She felt inexplicably better, however, when the
door opened and a man wearing jeans, alligator-skin cowboy boots,
and an enormous Stetson stepped off the plane. She might be worried
about talking to a state supreme court justice, but a supreme court
justice who also happened to be a cowboy might be somewhat easier
to handle.
Emerging from her Crown Victoria, Joanna walked
forward to meet him. Once he finished setting the chocks, he stood
up and wiped his hands on the back of his jeans.
“Justice Tazewell?” Joanna asked.
“I’m Sheriff Brady.”
“And you’re also very pregnant,”
Tazewell observed.
Accustomed to people’s veiled glances and
behind-the-back comments, Joanna found Lawrence Tazewell’s
directness surprisingly disarming.
“Yes,” she agreed with a laugh,
“I am.”
“When are you due?” he asked.
“Sometime this week,” Joanna
replied.
Tazewell nodded. “I know a little about
babies,” he observed as he followed Joanna back to the Crown
Victoria. In order to
accommodate her short
legs, Joanna kept the bench seat as far forward as possible. That
meant that Lawrence Tazewell’s knees were crammed up against
the glove compartment. He seemed oblivious, however.
“My stepdaughter had her little girl just a
week ago today,” he continued as he shifted in search of a
more comfortable position. “Seven pounds six ounces, born
screeching her lungs out at ten o’clock last Thursday
morning. Suzanne named her Destry Annette. Funny name for a girl if
you ask me, but no one did—ask me, that is. My only
contribution to the process was to be on hand to wield the digital
camera once the nurse had her wrapped and put her in
Suzanne’s arms. We loaded the photos into a computer and
e-mailed them to her daddy within an hour of her birth. My
son-in-law’s in the military, you see. He’s a pilot in
the air force and doing a tour of duty in the Middle East right
now. That’s why Sharon and I were called in as
reinforcements.”
By then they had settled into the vehicle, and
Joanna was headed back to the Justice Center. “Where?”
she asked.
“Where’s he stationed?” Tazewell
returned.
“No,” Joanna said. “Where does
your stepdaughter live?”
“Denver,” Tazewell answered. “Ron
is from there. His parents own a bunch of apartment buildings, and
they’re letting Suzanne and the kids stay in one of them
rent-free while Ron is overseas. Destry’s brother, Johnny, is
three years old and a real pistol. The other grandparents looked
after him while Sharon and I were at the hospital.”
As Tazewell spoke, Joanna was doing some
calculating of her own. Bradley Evans had died sometime the
previous Wednesday or Thursday. If, as Lawrence Tazewell claimed,
he had been off in Colorado doing grandfather duty, it seemed
likely that he had no connection to the Evans homicide.
“Did you fly your own plane up there?”
she asked.
“Of course,” he said. “Commercial
flying is such a pain these days that I avoid it whenever possible.
We left right after I got off work on Wednesday and were there in
time for dinner. It could have taken us the same amount of time
just to clear security at Sky Harbor.”
As they came up over the hill south of the
ballpark, Tazewell looked around and sighed. “Looks like
nothing’s changed,” he said. “When I first got
elected to the superior court, I thought Aileen and I would move
over here. I’d even made an offer on a nice place over on the
Vista, but she refused to leave her folks’ ranch. Her mother
was starting to have some health issues about then. And she stayed
on even after both her parents passed away. As far as I know,
she’s still there. I’m the one who moved on.”